30. Thyra
Chapter Thirty
Thyra
Stepping into the dark channel is like accepting the cold fingers of death wrapping around my heart.
The silence within this space is oppressive, but in the far distance, I make out shrieks I recognize as those of hungry vampyrs.
Only the serpent’s slithering body breaks the quiet. The golden beast stays close to Maxim’s side where he steps into the dark a beat behind me. Still keeping his distance.
“Thyra,” Miriam murmurs at my other side. “Do you see that white glow in the distance?”
“I do.”
“You must go to that light.”
My brow furrows. “You said there was someone I needed to meet and something I needed to see.”
“Both are within that light.”
The furrow in my brow remains, but I move forward, only for Miriam to stay where she is. “Miriam?”
“We would not have let you face this alone,” she says. “But now we can see that Maxim must be the one to go with you.”
“Without you,” I say, drawing conclusions.
“It is as it should be.” She takes my hand. “We’ll be here waiting when you come back.”
Maxim has already made it farther ahead of me, but now he pauses, his serpent sliding to a stop beside him.
The heat waves wafting around Maxim’s muscular back and chest create a glow around him.
Not that I need his fire to be able to see.
Antony’s powerful eyesight is mine to use and with it, I can make out every detail of the uneven ground, along with the shape of the mountain range ahead of us and the white glow originating from a point behind those mountains.
A source of light that I’m being told to head toward but is making my skin prickle even from this distance.
Another quick assessment of Miriam tells me her heartbeat is calm, her gaze reassuring.
“Whatever that light is—” I begin.
“You’re strong enough to face what lies within it,” Miriam says. “Thyra, I’ve known you for only a few hours and already I understand how much weight you carry on your shoulders. I ask only that you trust me in this.”
I take another glance across the distance, making out the shape of what must be a narrow pass through the mountain range, given the sliver of light shining through it.
“A long way to walk,” I murmur.
“Then you should begin,” Miriam replies before she darts closer. “Unless you want to commandeer Maxim’s serpent.”
She steps back with a wink and hurries to the Mothers, who have gathered near the edge of the dark channel.
I guess I’m on my own.
Well, except that I’m not.
Farther ahead, Maxim wears a confused scowl, as it seems he’s realized Miriam and the Mothers aren’t coming with us, but he turns away and keeps moving.
I don’t try to catch up, but I have no problem matching his speed.
While the gap between us and the Mothers widens, Maxim maintains the distance between him and me, staying ahead but to my right, where he can easily keep me in his sights.
After a few long and quiet minutes, and just when I’m about to break the silence between me and the Ember King, I pick up the Mothers’ whispers from behind me, words I wouldn’t be able to hear if not for Stellen’s power.
“Let’s rest until Thyra returns,” one of them says.
“If she comes back,” Charis replies.
“Only she can decide that,” Miriam says, an equally quiet whisper.
I nearly miss a step, unsettled by what they said, but I right myself and keep going.
As we walk, still in silence, I notice a pattern between Maxim and me.
If I veer even slightly toward him, he reasserts the distance between us. I’m not certain it’s even conscious on his part. As if he’s deeply attuned to the nearness of any fae and moves away out of sheer habit.
The more often he does this, the more I want to test him.
Not to be cruel. I need to know if the blood bind’s effects will protect me from his flames.
I need to know if I can withstand his fire, or at least to what extent I can withstand it.
Not out of reckless pride, but so I can plan.
I need to know the limits of my new strength.
After another long minute of heavy silence, broken only by our footfalls and the serpent’s slithering across the sandy ground, I speak up.
“For someone who once tried to seize me, you seem determined to keep your distance.”
“You seem determined to endanger yourself,” he snaps back.
As he speaks, new flames flicker around his hands and across his shoulder blades. No, make that hand, singular. His right hand isn’t gleaming. Given how randomly his fire seems to appear, I don’t read too much into it.
“I’m not as fragile as you may think,” I say, keeping my tone neutral.
Maxim slows his pace, allowing me to draw level with him while keeping the same proportionate distance between us. But it seems his pause was in service of subjecting me to the full force his glare.
“Not fragile?” He arches an eyebrow at me. “When Stellen brought you to me, you were at death’s door.”
“Well, you fight a pack of wolves, defeat Lilis, and hold a world-destroying power in your hand, and I’d like to know at whose door you’ll knock.”
“Hell’s door,” he mutters, but his lips curve and his eyebrows arch. “You fought Lilis? And survived?”
That’s what he finds most impressive?
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Damn. He’s irritating me. A slow, creeping angst.
He gives me a lazy smile through the sooty strands of his brown hair and I’m suddenly conscious that he’s allowed the gap between us to narrow.
I test his resolve, inching closer to him while we keep moving forward. He doesn’t edge away this time.
He’s gleaming with sweat, barely clothed and wearing only the scorched remains of what might have once been pants made from some kind of ochre-colored leather.
His feet are bare. Much of his muscular form is on display, but while he seems overly concerned about coming near me, he appears completely indifferent about his near-nakedness.
“As inspiring as that is,” he says, “you’ll forgive me if I don’t want to turn your world to flames.”
“Assuming you could.”
Sudden heat fills Maxim’s dark-brown eyes. “I know I could.”
My brow furrows.
His smile returns.
Until he seems to realize he’s veered even closer to me.
“Fucking moth to a flame,” he mutters.
“Flame to a moth,” I correct him, my eyebrows arched.
He doesn’t back down, putting extra space between us. “You are the furthest from a moth of any creature I’ve ever seen, Thyra.”
I’m not sure that’s a compliment.
Up ahead, the white glow is a little stronger now that we’re marginally closer to it, but at this pace, I’d guess we’re still hours away from our destination.
Miriam’s suggestion of commandeering Maxim’s serpent wasn’t a bad one.
“What is your serpent’s name?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t named him?” Something Maxim and Antony might have in common, given that Antony didn’t name Azul until I insisted.
Maxim’s voice is suddenly tight. “Naming him is not my place.”
Not the place of a king?
“I’m new to your customs,” I say, edging toward him, testing once again if he’ll let me close the gap between us. “Will you explain that to me?”
The tension in Maxim’s voice eases. “Every golden serpent is named once, and only once. Their name matches their soul. To change a serpent’s name is highly disrespectful.”
“So when you said you don’t know his name…”
“This serpent slithered out of the sand and presented himself to me two years ago,” Maxim says. “That was after ten years of other serpents refusing to carry me for fear of my fire. I hadn’t seen him before, but he was already fully grown. He already had those scars. Can you see them?”
His question might not be rhetorical, given how dark it is. I’m certain Maxim will assume I’m struggling with my vision right now. Certainly, his pupils are dilated. He’ll be accustomed to living in an overly bright environment.
“I see his scars.”
“My people assume I inflicted those burns, but I didn’t,” Maxim says.
“Those wounds, along with his age, mean he’s already seen battle and must already have a name.
I asked my sister, my cousin, and even Miriam, but with all their connections, they couldn’t tell me if this serpent carried a warrior before me or what the serpent’s name might be.
So here I am, calling him Serpent and nothing more. ”
The stiffness has returned to Maxim’s voice and now I attribute it not to anger, but to frustration.
“I take it calling him Serpent is one step down from insulting him with a new name.”
Maxim gives a heavy exhale. “For an animal as loyal and fearless as this serpent is, he deserves to be called by his soul-name. I wish I knew it.”
“What about giving him a title?”
Maxim throws me a questioning glance.
“Well, your name is Maxim, but your title is Ember King. Would it be insulting to give this serpent a designation that’s additional to his name?”
Maxim scratches his chin, dragging his hands through sweat and soot. “Maybe not. I’ll think on it.”
Silence falls between us, but the quiet allows me to hear the far-off explosions, the continuing fight at the border.
“When will it end?” I whisper.
He follows my focus to the right. “When the curse is broken.”
I shake my head, not so certain. “War is in hearts and minds. Breaking this curse won’t change old hatreds. Or new hatreds, for that matter.”
“At least we’ll have a chance.” Maxim’s voice is a snarl again as he peers at me for a long moment. “Do you not know the story of Tiboh, my great-grandfather?”
I shake my head. “You should assume my knowledge is limited.”
“Tiboh believed that the curse was an excuse. A story concocted to justify our ancestors’ thirst for power.
Basically, he didn’t believe in the curse.
” Maxim stares hard at me. “I ask you to consider that for a moment: an Ember Fae believed peace was possible. He was the first good king in a long line of tyrants.”
“What did he do?”
“He proposed peace,” Maxim says. “He convinced his people to follow him, he sent out emissaries, and he persuaded the Frost King and Iron King to meet with him under the banner of a truce.”
“They agreed?”
“They had lived longer than their predecessors and they were both weary of war.” Maxim pauses. “Did you know fae once lived for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?”
“I did hear that, but it feels impossible.”
“The curse shortened our lifetimes. We’re lucky to live to ninety now. Those kings were nearing a hundred. A hundred years of death. They wanted it to end.”
“What happened?” I ask. “Since clearly there is no happy ending.”
“They struck an accord. Every warrior laid down their weapons. The kings went home to their families.”
I’m afraid to ask. “But?”
“The next morning, the kings woke to grief. In the night, assassins had slaughtered their families, leaving only a single heir alive. The Iron King’s family was burned by frost. The Frost King’s family was burned by fire.
And the Ember King’s family was torn apart by iron blades.
Nobody heard the slaughter. The assassins themselves were found hunched over their victims, caught in a trance, unable to recall how they’d gotten there.
“Tiboh tried to call for the peace to hold, despite losing his loved ones, but the other two kings understood what Tiboh refused to see: the curse would always force us back into conflict. At least with war, there is an illusion of control over who lives and who dies.”
I press my hands to my stomach, wishing I could ease how unsettled this story makes me. “How did they know the attack happened because of the curse?”
“They didn’t,” Maxim acknowledges. “But it was clear that the three kings must remain enemies until this curse is broken.”
I want to challenge his certainty, even if I fear he’s right. “If that’s true, then how is Stellen fighting at your border?”
“Well, that’s easy.” Fire flares around Maxim’s broad chest. “Stellen Nas’Lethian is no longer a king.”
A sharp truth that only raises another question in my mind: what about Antony? Is he still King of Iron?
If he isn’t a king anymore, then what becomes of the forced enmity between them? Does peace between them bring hope?
Or does it mean destruction?
Can the answer lie in hearts and minds, or are we all pawns of fate?
Too many questions.
When I first met Antony, and then Stellen, I asked them what they wanted from me. But now I need to know something far more important.
“Who are you, King of Ember?”
Without hesitation, Maxim lifts his left hand, his tan skin gleaming, his fingers suddenly encased in flames. “I am fire.”
He turns away, once again increasing the gap that I had worked to narrow.
“I am fire until the day I die.” Then, with a quiet exhale, he murmurs, “Which won’t be long now.”
I’m startled by what he said. “What do you mean by that?”
He doesn’t answer, his focus on the mountains. “Reaching the light will take us hours at this rate.”
My voice hardens. “Maxim?”
His brown eyes narrow at me from behind his hair, a gleaming ferocity as he glares back at me. “You used my name.”
“I’ll use it again if you’ll answer me.”
“You should fly on my serpent,” he says. “I can run. I’ll end up naked, but there are spare clothes in the satchel beneath his saddle.”
Maxim’s already launching himself into a run, his fading shout snapping back to me. “If my nakedness offends you, Oracle, be sure to avert your eyes.”